Lets' see. If we would have taken the same position during the 1960's and 1970's, the dams along the Columbia and Peace Rivers would never have been built.

BC Hydro would not have had these legacy dams today and BC citizens would not be the beneficiaries of relatively low electricity rates.

When BC Hydro first applied to construct Site C during 1980, the Revelstoke dam along the Columbia had yet to be constructed.

Time to get BC Hydro back into the energy game big time. I mean come on people we don't all want new power generation to be constructed by IPP's or do we?

Also time to take a page out of Manitoba Hydro's notebook. That is, construct large dams such as Site C, enter into long-term energy purchase agreements with various U.S. states making these U.S. states pay off a good chunk of Site C's capital costs over time.

By the time BC Hydro requires the power for its BC needs, Site C's capital costs could potentially be substantially paid off and thus BC Hydro will be once again producing relatively cheap power from Site C with concurrent lower electricty rates

We don't need the power. Why flood valuable agricultural land just so more power can be exported to the US?

from the article linked above:

Quote:

"We're willing to flood the entire valley, throw people out that have been there since the 1900s, and are taxpayers and have never had a problem, we're going to displace First Nations again, we're going to eliminate our tourism and wildlife and agricultural abilities in the valley, in exchange for 70 to 100 years of power, all of which will be exported to the United States or the tar sands.

"The result of that," Forrest continued, "is profit for the province, 90 per cent of which ends up in the Lower Mainland, and we end up with the mess. What do we get in exchange? We get five to seven years of jobs, most of which will be tendered and given to people outside of this area."

Like all major dam projects, the goal is not energy, or green power, or jobs, or sustainability. The goal of large-scale dam projects is always, always, the enrichment of a connected political elite at the expense of the local residents, first nations communities, and downstream ecosystems.

Have you been in the Peace River valley that is slated to be destroyed to enrich BC Hydro and its shareholders? I doubt it. Northreport sounds like a typical privileged urbanite whose solutions to entirely fabricated problems will always come at the expense of those people least able to defend themselves.

Those people will lose their homes, the valley ecosystem will be destroyed, downstream communities will face water shortages and lower river levels, First Nations communities will be displaced and further marginalized (White people want "clean" power, Indians have to deal with the consequences without any voice or recourse).

Let's stick a nuclear power plant in North Vancouver, and see how juiced BCers are for "clean" power.

Actually it is not in BC residents' interests to have these private IPP. But Site C is something different as it stays in the public's hands.

And politically you can NOT run against decent jobs and expect to win in BC, nor in Canada. And it is the same picture for the pipelines.

'

Quote:

It says the scheme will commit BC Hydro to pay independent power producers about twice the value that their electricity would fetch on the North American spot trading market -- $120 per megawatt hour to buy B.C.-produced power that will trade on a western North America market where the projected long-term price averages $60.

The only purpose for Site C would be to export energy. From the Georgia Straight:

"[Fort St. John Mayor Bruce] Lantz pointed to electricity trade statistics, compiled by Statistics Canada and the National Energy Board, that show that B.C. was a net exporter of energy (measured in megawatt-hours) in seven of the past 11 years—from 1998 through 2008."

...

"Vancouver-based Site C opponent Joe Foy, national campaign director with the Wilderness Committee, told the Straight by phone that “the [B.C. Liberal] government is bending over backwards to create a phony shortage.” Foy claimed that B.C. Hydro’s own 2007 Marbek Report contradicted government, stressing conservation measures and stating “we need not be using more power in 2027 than we used in 2007”. Foy said the Marbek Report has been shelved for now."

With an increasing population, and increasing use of technological gadgets, how can that possibly be? What about all the electrical cars that are about to be massproduced and consumed. And all the mining that is starting up again in BC as well. It just doesn't make sense that our power needs won't expand.

The industry committee notes that the government is using a worst-case scenario to determine the amount of new power needed to meet the self-sufficiency target -- based on the single driest year in the past six decades.

The industry committee says that in most years Hydro will have a substantial electricity surplus.

Analysing BC"s power balance of trade is not easy. BC buys cheap coal fired power from Alberta so it can sell hydro power on the spot market to California at a higher price. If BC Hydro was operated in the interests of British Columbians we could stop both exports to the US and imports from Alberta.

The Columbia River Treaty allower the flooding on severl BC valleys in exchange for (anong other things) "downstream benefits" which could have been taken as power, but instead was taken in cash in the form of the Columbia Basin Trust. The Province has a choice to import power generated by the flooding of it's own valleys but it chooses to build even more dams instead.

What about all the electrical cars that are about to be massproduced and consumed. And all the mining that is starting up again in BC as well. It just doesn't make sense that our power needs won't expand.

And what about all our future hovercars and jetpacks?

The problem isn't that there isn't enough power. The problem is a sense of entitlement that demands ever increasing resource consumption for useless crap like electric cars, and the destruction of a river system in support of shareholder profits.

It's gotta stop. Saying the problem is that we're running out of power is like a junkie saying his problem isn't that he's a drug addict, it's finding more dealers to keep him in the junk when he starts using more.

Actually about 50% of voters in the last election did just that. They stayed at home because they felt no party was addressing their interests. In BC the choice seems to be between a well funded Friedmanite cabal or an anti-tax party who brags that they set up the regulatory structure that has allowed the extraction of dirty, dirty shale oil from the BC North.

And in a world eager for renewable clean energy, BC Hydro’s Powerex division is bringing in substantial revenues for the people of this province through energy trading with other provinces and states which puts BC Hydro in a stronger position than ever.BC Hydro booming

Bold added for emphasis

If BC Hydro was actually servicing the need of the electorate of British Columbia then "the progressive steps" would not need to address extra "expansionary efforts to maximize profits." The business of BC Hydro, as a public company, is to serve that electorate not to fund electrical consumers in other places. It is about here at home. It is about statistical determinations as to the cost to these consumers in BC. Two tier systems my ass.

The rates increases are bogus attempts to profit off the backs of the people of BC when it should have been used to keep the cost of hydro down. Any privatization government would see that you pay according to the market consideration, like BC gas did to a conversion.

Ultimately, it sets up the company to be sold based on that profitability?

Kelowna The B.C. Public Utilities Commission (BCUC), whose mission, according to their website, is to ensure that ratepayers receive services at fair rates from the utilities it regulates, has allowed Terasen Gas to increase its (Midstream) Commodity charges to Kelowna customers an outrageous 75%, says Lynda Zorn, North Okanagan spokesperson for the BC Federation of Retired Union Members (BC FORUM).

It has also approved a 12.5% increase in delivery charges for Terasen Gas, and the 6% hike Fortis BC implemented and which the City of Kelowna will pass along to its utility customers, and is now considering BC Hydro's application for a 9% increase, which I have no doubt will also slide through, said Ms. Zorn.

Add to that the Liberal's Clean Energy Levy, Carbon Tax, Innovative Clean Energy Fund Levy, Franchise Fee, and the GST, soon to be HST, all a percentage of the total of all the other charges, and you are almost tripling the cost of energy you actually use hardly an incentive to conserve, she said.

Ms. Zorn points out that this year, Seniors CPP benefits increased less than 1/2 % and their Old Age Security not at all. How then, can Seniors manage to heat their homes when faced with these unrealistic increases?

Ms. Zorn would like British Columbians to know that the BC Utilities Commissioners are appointed, and that, as the Commission asserts in its website, its costs are recovered primarily through a levy on the public utilities it regulates.

Don't think for a moment that these costs are not passed on to the utilities customers. Further, is this dealing at arm's length or is it a conflict of interest, she asks.

Anyway, run of the river projects and BCUC should be put under investigation. Descisions there are able to implement allowance for increases but it is not able to stop the BC Governement for the Run of the river rojects? These do not help the people of British Columbia and was nothing more then a profit scheme off the back of nature. "Inside government information" lead to a mass exodus of people who would invest to profit.

So far I am not seeing a case against this dam. The comparisons will Williston Resevoir are silly - site C resevoir would be 1/20th the size of Williston, yet generate 1/3 the energy produced by the power house there. The Peace already has two other dams on it, so site C seems to be a reasonable addition with a good payback, and the payback will benefit the whole province by bringing in additional export revenue. Of course the benefits flow mainland to the Lower Mainland - most of the population lives there!

No IPPs and no site C is a silly position. We know the whole province benefits from a public BC Hydro developing the province's rivers. We are much better going the Site C route and fighting hard against IPPs.

BC isn't going to miss the 50 to 5000 hectares of currently under utilized arable land that Site C is going to take out. If shit ever really does hit the fan then we can get a lot more effecient with our farmland close to our actual population centres.

Not to mention, Site C should put a damper on enthusiasm to bring nuclear power to northern alberta. New generation like site C, which is just a stone's throw from the oilsands, is a game changer for nuke advocates looking to feed the oilsands with reactors.

Haven't seen to much interest in a defining of the "public services" other then Thanks trying to organize the thoughts in a framework.

Click on image for larger viewing

So, that is what my post was about. More in helping to reshape what pubic services can mean when we as citizens own that company.

If the dam was thought to create jobs, it will never be about that no matter how hard you try to justify it. We know a profitable busness "can take care of it's own without adding hidden costs" to economy recovery. Shall it be off the back of families and workers who are now sitting at home while our CEO's shall not be given any more preference then the workers that work to sustain this busness for the province.

Time to shake up the glass houses these people of busness think their in.

It’s like rubbing salt in the wounds,” says Pat Moss, who worked tirelessly and from the early 1980s into the late 1990s to stop Alcan from damming more northern rivers and diverting more water to run their aluminum smelter in Kitimat.

She is not surprised that Alcan is now openly focused on selling power instead of creating jobs at the aluminum smelter in Kitimat and the never-developed-yet-promised plants in places like Terrace and Vanderhoof.

It askes that we be shaken out of that apathetic state and to recognize now, it is not about being politcal anymore. It a matter of survival and their is no limit it seems when given a blank check, what's left to fight with?

The Miller Creek project is a run-of-the-river hydroelectric station typical of many proposed independent power projects in BC Hydro's long-term plan.

The B.C. Utilities Commission has pulled the plug on BC Hydro's controversial plan to buy electricity from dozens of run-of-river and wind-power projects.

The utilities commission has determined the long-term acquisition scheme is not practical and not in the public interest.

The commission has directed the utility instead to continue using the gas-fired Burrard thermal plant.

The NDP says the decision is a major setback for Hydro and the Liberal government of Premier Gordon Campbell.

"It's a slap in the face to the B.C. Liberal energy plan," said B.C. NDP energy critic John Horgan. "The regulator has said we don't need this high-priced independent power at this time."

During the May provincial election campaign, environmental organizations were split on whether or not the small power projects were a good idea. And at least one environmentalist criticized the commission's decision.

It helps to clarify how the state of things have come to pass, and how they work regardless of BCUC rulings.

Right now, you and the rest of the province may be on vacation. But it looks like the folks at British Columbia's number one gas company are a little busy. Today, Terasen Inc. announced it had been bought by Houston, Texas-based energy transportation and storage giant Kinder Morgan Inc. for $5.6 billion. But what the release didn't mention was that the sell-off (which must still be approved by the British Columbia Utilities Commission) was made possible, in part, by the provincial Liberals. Back in November 2003, the Campbell administration introduced and later passed the B.C. Hydro Public Power Legacy and Heritage Act, which removed legal provisions preventing Terasen being taken over by another firm without cabinet's approval or moving its headquarters out of province.

People need to give their head a good shake. Now you get some sense of what has been going on and where it was going. It doesn't have to be that way. You can "redefine what you want out of a public company."

If Gordon Campbell is re-elected the enormous Bute Inlet project of Plutonic/General Electric will be approved – 17 rivers involved – and with that precedent there’ll be no way to turn down future private power applications. BC will be in the business of being the biggest supplier of energy in the western United States and river after river will become suppliers of that power. The profits of that power will not go to the people of BC but to shareholders, like Warren Buffet at General Electric......See:River Privatization Just Produces Power That We Don’t Need

We live on a constantly changing planet surface. 3/4s of the earth's surface is covered with water, yet fresh water is in short supply. Peace River folks might want to consider how to put all the coming dammed up water to productive use, instead of crying over spilled milk, er water.

And sure let's have wind power generated throughout the province, and the country as well. People in BC should be thanking their lucky stars they don't have to depend on nuclear power like those poor folks around Toronto.

Quote:

Peace Could Create Plenty of Green Energy Without Site C

Why kill a valley when its region is rich in wind and geothermal energy?

And if a few multinational corporations and a few Liberal insiders get filthy rich off of the destruction of what's left of the Peace River valley, so what? At least a few people will have a few temporary jobs, and Northreport can blather on and on like some 1950's small town booster. Just because every claim made by the proponents of these hydro projects turn out to be complete bullshit doesn't mean that they can't be repeated ad nauseam as if they were true.

That is the situation...and the answer to the question as to why is the Province intent on damming or industrializing hundreds or rivers/creeks in BC, including Site C, is because the market rules and there is money to be made by exporting power to a continental market - an export market that will soon diminish as US states themselves become more self-sufficent in 'greener' energy and as Seth will no doubt say - cheap nuclear power. Through incompetence, mismangement, cronyism and corruption the BC government is financially and ethically broke - the meme of the day is "anything for a buck'. or as John Lennon said ' the lights have changed'. Finally if you think the NDP, a highly centralized political party whose elites and leader, CJ, refuse to campaign on policy (such as their sustainability platform) democratically adopted in Convention offers a viable, hopeful alternative, IMO, you're dreaming.

From the destruction that is occuring, something must arise from the ashes to renew not only hope, but this Province, IMO, that something must pose a radical challenge to the existing meme, and the challenge for the Left is to clarify the values, principals and practical goals of such a movement - without engaging in self-destructive ultra-radicalism or destructive disunity. Indeed a modern socialism, an eco-socialism that facilitates participative democracy and economic democracy.

Yes most certainly the North Report has "nothing new to add?" I think we want to push forward a "clear message" to clear the air of a "politico mesmerizer," while dealing with the issues. You just had to know of the idea of the "insatiable hunger's origination" as well as the offshoots that are used to prep for private market conditions.

This requires "a clear definition of public service" and one that has not been distorted by those forces which seek to "serve it's own for profit ends."

The Whole System

Quote:

Macroecology approaches the idea of studying ecosystems using a "top down" approach. It seeks understanding through the study of the properties of the system as a whole; Kevin Gaston and Tim Blackburn make the analogy to seeing the forest for the trees (literally).

The public understanding to support the existing system should be calibrated to mean, in order to make life bearable at advantages that seek to minimize those costs to Nature and for Provincial consumers.

Quote:

Holism (from ὅλος holos, a Greek word meaning all, whole, entire, total) is the idea that all the properties of a given system (physical, biological, chemical, social, economic, mental, linguistic, etc.) cannot be determined or explained by its component parts alone. Instead, the system as a whole determines in an important way how the parts behave.

The infrastructure already exists to make this so, yet does not perform in any way that I know of that profits Nature or the citizens, more then, the private companies that grow out of the need for that sustainability?

The last few chapters of the Site C story have yet to be written, but as writer Steve Roe noted in "Down the River," a regular column in the Northeast News that explored the issues that informed the debate about the Site C Dam, those looking for a preview of what they could look like would do well to re-read their copy of George Orwell's Animal Farm. In Orwell's famous political allegory, the construction (and destruction) of a windmill plays a central role in the conflict between Snowball and Napoleon, the two pigs that helped engineer the takeover of the Manor Farm. While Snowball (the good pig) sees the windmill as a means to a common good, the production of electricity, his rival Napoleon (the nasty one) instead uses it to exploit the work of the other animals in order to turn a profit for himself and his cabal. To that end, and despite the more pressing need for basic shelter and food, Napoleon convinces Boxer (a horse with a particularly strong work ethic) and the other common animals to perform backbreaking labor in order to build the windmill.

Yet in the end, the windmill that these common animals sacrificed so much to build isn't used to improve their lives but instead to enrich the pigs who have taken control of the farm. BC Hydro isn't run by a pack of scheming pigs, of course, but there are some striking similarities between Orwell's allegory about a small farm in England and the proposed Site C Dam project on B.C.'s Peace River. The residents of the Peace River region, some of whom have spent most of their adult lives fighting against the Site C Dam, can only hope that their story doesn't end the same way as Orwell's does.

And how absurd to equate this site C project with the NEP which thank goodness Trudeau implemented.

Is it 10 people or 10 families that are going to be dispaced? And it is not as if they have had no warning that site C was eventually going to be built. It's not as if they haven't had lots of time to plan for the situation.

Quote:

Must the 'Big Smoke' Always Get Its Way?

Site C as bully politics. Rural citizens are sick of seeing what they love ruined to satisfy ungrateful urbanites. Last of five.

- from the comments which are often better than the articles themselves

Oppressed by other people's energy use?

I'm sure there are many reasons to not like Site C dam. However Canadians, including high-fossil consuming rural folks, whining about being burdened by other people's energy impacts is just pathetic.

Canadians climate pollute at the very top levels globally. We just love our fossil fuels. In BC we burn FOSSIL FUELS for 75% of our energy. In BC we IMPORT more OIL energy than we produce in all our clean electricity. Canadians are top 10 in the world in total climate pollution ever and in per-capita climate pollution today.

Our dirty energy use is trashing the ecosystems that most of the world's people (mostly poor) depend on for survival basics. Half of humanity uses almost no fossil fuels, but suffer from our downstream energy piggyness.

What can we do about our energy-impacts on others? Well number one is to cut back on how much fossil fuel we burn. Too bad that isn't even in this version of the Site C discussion. Talk about forcing others to live with the downsides of one's unexamined energy addictions.

Some opponents of Site C even have the nerve to suggest burning more fossil fuels instead! Burrard Thermal is a fossil fuel plant where BC Hydro buys all the energy from dirty-energy IPPs, burns it all and distributes what energy is left as dirty electricity. And this solves the energy injustice issue somehow?

BC has a huge energy dilemma that many are refusing to face. Our primary energy source is climate thrashing oil...not electricity. We import over 75,000kWh of oil every year. This is far more than BC Hydro generates in all electricity. This oil guzzle is neither energy self-sufficiency nor climate sanity.

The energy-impacts injustices being inflicted on others from our massive fossil fuel use are huge and oddly left out of this discussion of Site C. In fact our entire fossil fuel gluttony is being left out of this energy discussion. Why?

Maybe we don't want site C as a society...but we should at least have the honesty to discuss its pros and cons in the context of our piggy and dirty fossil-fuel dominated energy usage.

The most Orwellian thing about many such discussions these days about Site C and other clean energy options is the double-speak where our "energy" doesn't include our "fossil fuels" anymore.

Please re-read this article with the basic fact that we burn climate-thrashing fossil fuels (mostly imported oil) for almost all our energy in BC...and ask yourself how we can possibly meet our own goals if we ignore most of our energy impacts in the context of Site C tradeoffs.

You must work for BC Hydro, or the Liberals. Nobody can be that deliberately thick without sufficient compensation.

Then again, there are those "environmentalists" and "green activists" who firmly believe that the solution to planetary resource depletion comes down to buying a Prius tp take their little consumers to soccer practice. They cannot fathom a way of life that doesn't involve the profit motive any more than a fish can fathom life out of water.

I especially like how quick and easily (and happily) Northreport displaces people, destroys lives, damages indigenous communities, and relegates ecosystems to desruction all for the "greater good" of exporting power to the US. Like a good Stalinist, you can't make an omelet without breaking a few heads.

Of course we should be selling our renewable resources like Hydro-Electric power to the USA, to the rest of Canada, as well as any other country that's buying.

Alaska is the richest state in the union, giving $1,000. each year to its residents. BC perhaps might want to aim for that so that its Lower Mainland residents could at least pay for some kind of down payment on a home.

-----------------------------------------------

Money talks, and bullshit walks! So what else is new, eh.

Quote:

Plutonic Tops List of Power Firms Donating to Libs

Of the 14 successful firms in BC Hydro's latest call for power, 10 have made contributions to the Liberals totaling nearly $385,000.

Nearly all of the independent power producers (IPPs) selected recently by BC Hydro for long-term Energy Purchase Agreements (EPAs) have made sizeable financial donations to Gordon Campbell's BC Liberal party.

An analysis of Elections BC records by The Tyee reveals that 10 of the 14 lucky companies -- or their corporate parents or subsidiaries, or officers, directors or significant shareholders -- given EPAs on March 11 and 31 have made at least 165 gifts of cash to the BC Liberals since 2005.

Of course we should be selling our renewable resources like Hydro-Electric power to the USA, to the rest of Canada, as well as any other country that's buying.

Alaska is the richest state in the union, giving $1,000. each year to its residents. BC perhaps might want to aim for that so that its Lower Mainland residents could at least pay for some kind of down payment on a home.

This is a typical NorthReport thread. S/he's come up with a grand theory and will defend it in the face of all history, logic or cogent arguments.

You don't even have permission to live in BC. Don't you think that you should clear up that little detail before you start telling people which valley you're going to flood? Typical white-supremacist settler mentality.

Alaska is the richest state in the union, giving $1,000. each year to its residents. BC perhaps might want to aim for that so that its Lower Mainland residents could at least pay for some kind of down payment on a home.

-----------------------------------------------

Money talks, and bullshit walks! So what else is new, eh.

Lets see a single detached home in Vancouver costs over $1,000,000 so at a thousand dollars a year it would only take a hundred years to get a 10% down payment. Of course you could buy a condo in Burnaby for a mere $500,000 so you could get a down payment in a mere 50 years at a grand a year. Wow I think we should sell everything off at those prices. H

They are are busily clear cutting absolutely everything in that area,that there is to cut, in fact, the whole mills restarting in Mackenzie now make sense in this light.

In WAC's time, they bought and used tree crushers to try and get rid of the trees that were going to be under water, which created a huge problem. As opposed to making it a wonderful recreational area, for all seasons, as they had planned. Too many particulates in the water.

Nowadays, they are just clear cutting ahead of the curve and the Peoples whose land that it is have already had to move x 2, and now they want to make it 3.

Plus, it also indicates that the forestry companies, are going to get a huge payout as well from the tax payers, as they all have 75 year land use grants contracts, and their land will be under water.

What a win win win for them, as they are clear cutting everything, and thus making the most off of the "fibre product" that they can. When done clear cutting they do not have to engage in silvaculture expenses either now, because the area is going to be flooded anyway.

And then, once it is all clear cut, and flooded, they will get a tax payer hand out, for taking away their 75 years worth of land use. No wonder Jim Shepard, formerly of Slocan Group (Canfor today), is now at the former Abitibi mill, and is trying to get their 10% land use grant back, it is worth millions if it is flooded, in recompense.

And to add insult to injury, the unions workers took a 1000.00 per month pay cut.

It's an important question since the question of importing has provided the BC Liberals with the smoke screens they are most famous for, and there too, the consultations with the BC electorate they are most famous for. The BC Liberals have a plan "hell or high water."

In BC, we presently use about 55,000 GWh per year according to BC Hydro. This will rise to about 58,000 GWh in 2013. With "heritage" hydro and thermal capacity, plus existing and new contracted capacity, plus conservation and efficiencies, our generation capacity will exceed consumption until 2013. This is pretty much as it is laid out in BC Hydro's 2004 Integrated Electricity Plan

The "net importer" story that Mr. Elton and Energy and Mines Minister Richard Neufeld never seem to tire of telling, is a different story. The government expects a revenue stream from BC Hydro. In the 2004/2005 budget, it budgeted for about $400 million to net back to provincial coffers. How Hydro does this is clever, it's good busines, and it usually ends up with BC being a net importer of electricity, but an overwhelmingly successful winner on the bottom line, year after year.

A thought occurred to me. Does Alcan and all electrical producers sell power at day rates, or night rates?

I don't know if most of you seen this article written and reported in the news of Global. But to say I was dismayed was the least of my thinking and I will tell you why in a minute.

In 2005 I wrote the article above, that more or less explains what has always been happening. You as a BC resident only get a half baked truth to supported the media view sanctioned by Global news. You see, they have already incorporated the Run of the River into the everyday view, while the BCUC has already made it's determinations about that part of the process. Now with the IPPBC view firmly implanted in your minds, we are going to go one step further too support the illusion of not having enough energy for the province?

Strumming an acoustic guitar in his unofficial mayoral digs, the Whole Wheat ’n Honey restaurant, first-term Fort St. John mayor and former journalist Bruce Lantz knows more than most municipal politicians about Site C. In 1999, he was short-listed (and subsequently overlooked) for a position as northern communications rep with B.C. Hydro. The interview process required intense study of corporate documents pertaining to, among other topics, the wholly-owned subsidiary and trading arm of B.C. Hydro known as Powerex.

Unlike his mayoral predecessor, Jim Eglinski, Lantz is opposed to Site C. Like many opponents, Lantz said the dam will not benefit local residents or even British Columbians provincewide. He said B.C. already has enough power, and he claimed that Site C will enable mass exports of “green” power to California, or even Alberta and (indirectly) the oil-sands operations. (“It could happen.”) Lantz also claimed that the B.C. Liberal government, including former Peace River North MLA and energy minister Richard Neufeld, has manufactured an “energy deficit” to suit this export agenda.

“When they started talking about this energy deficit [in 2005], I went to [B.C. Hydro northern communications rep] Dave Conway, Richard Neufeld, and the [B.C. Hydro] CEO, Bob Elton, at different times, and said, ‘Okay, I remember when we had this huge surplus. We used to buy and sell, and we would sell at peak price points, and we’d buy it back at low price points, and it was all good and we had lots of electricity,’” Lantz recalled. “And I said, ‘What has changed from ’99 to ’05 so drastically that now we were in this energy deficit?’”

According to Lantz, “Nobody gave the information.”

“I said, ‘Keep it simple, because I’m just a dumb Nova Scotian, but you should be able to provide that, because you are selling this on this concept,’ ” he said. “And they never, ever did.”

Lantz pointed to electricity trade statistics, compiled by Statistics Canada and the National Energy Board, that show that B.C. was a net exporter of energy (measured in megawatt-hours) in seven of the past 11 years—from 1998 through 2008.

Blair Lekstrom, the current energy minister and Peace River South Liberal MLA, did not return calls from the Straight.

Third-generation Bear Flat farmer ArleneBoon and her husband, Ken, are happy toshare their thoughts about the Site C dam.Matthew Burrows photo.

Vancouver-based Site C opponent Joe Foy, national campaign director with the Wilderness Committee, told the Straight by phone that “the [B.C. Liberal] government is bending over backwards to create a phony shortage.” Foy claimed that B.C. Hydro’s own 2007 Marbek Report contradicted government, stressing conservation measures and stating “we need not be using more power in 2027 than we used in 2007”. Foy said the Marbek Report has been shelved for now.

“When reasonable people accept that there is a shortage, then reasonable people begin to believe that we need to…do Site C,” Foy said.

CLIENT: BC HydroCHALLENGE: BC Hydro is a North American leader in the design and delivery of demand-side management (DSM) programs and in the integration of DSM in utility resource planning and corporate management frameworks. To support its DSM commitments, BC Hydro required a detailed assessment of how much electricity conservation and customer-side electricity generation is [...]

So here's the thing since we are entertained with the Global news views supported by a media giant who seeks to support the plan as it is to unfold according to the FIBeral view, how about a little story then that will help to shape some of the perspective about this clandestine operation that the Liberals run in this Province and see if any of rings true to your ears.

A BC Liberal troll on babble how nice. This is a bad idea that i believe is designed to work in conjunction with the tar sands. This is going to be the power source for the tar sands. Once they have managed to ram this down the throats of the FN's and other citizens of the north they will turn their energies to building the pipeline over the dead bodies of other elders and activists.

Remember, Campbell wasn't actually announcing the construction of Site C. Rather he was setting in motion the processes to evaluate the environmental and economic impact. The way he couched the announcement made it seem like more. My concern is that there may be another agenda here. The actual decision may be years away, but we can see how debate has been refocused. For many it is a trap - complain about private power and the Lieberals will point to Site C with the typical "see what we are doing". While many FNs and environmental groups spend time and resources on Site C, the far worse project, Enbridge Pipeline and the Kitimat Oilport, will receive less attention. Moe Sihota made a good point on CBC yesterday. There is a actually a bag full of potential power projects from new turbines at Mica, wind, tide etc. that allow for good choices, but this is not a discussion of the best way to develop public resources.

There is some talk of an expansion at the Waneta Dam as well, but every day we lose a bit more of our public resources to the private sector.
Compared to other areas however, BC is very fortunate to have all this hydro-electric power potential.

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B.C. opens floodgates with third Peace River dam

Ralph Spinney, who retired from BC Hydro in 1989, said there were critics when he was construction manager on the W.A.C. Bennett Dam in the 1960s. He said people complained the dam would create more energy than the province needed, and that, located in northeast B.C., it was too far from where the power was needed.

"I sort of had doubts too," he said. Does he have doubts about Site C? "No. None whatsoever."

Mr. Spinney said that by building downstream of the existing dams, Site C gets to make use of the reservoir behind W.A.C. Bennett Dam, by reusing the water. "That's 640 square miles of reservoir out there," he said. "Look at it. That's the envy of the world when you are talking power generation because that gives you firm power."

He said without big dams, B.C. would have had to turn to power-generation methods that would have been more environmentally damaging. "These projects have kept us from coal, oil and gas, and nuclear for all these years. I think it's great we're now going ahead with Site C."